The word "color" refers to a basic and nearly immediate property by
which something presents itself to its audience. Nearly every sensuous medium possesses,
produces, or inspires a sense of color. Color is conceivably objective, subjective, or illusory,
depending upon how one considers its manner of manifestation; most literally, color is a visual
quality, although non-visual media, such as sound and language, can also be said to possess
characteristic colors. Hence, it has a ubiquitous and complex relationship to media.

The color of visible matter is arguably objective in that the color is characteristic of the
matter's material composition and its interactions with other matter: wine is red, sunsets are
golden, et cetera. An object displays its color by reflecting or transmitting corresponding
portions of the visible light spectrum while simultaneously absorbing all other portions of
the spectrum that contact it. In this mode of thought, color has the power "to induce sensory
experiences... understood as a sensory quality." [1] However, color is simultaneously
subjective because, arguably, it only exists in one's perception
as the eye reacts to light, and thus color's significance is dependent upon the individual who
perceives it. As Johann Wolfgang von Goethe observes, "A grey object on a black ground appears
much brighter than the same object on a white ground." [2] To complicate things further, color
is also arguably illusory; that is, objects do not actually have color at all because all
physical accounts of objects do not explain why they are colored as such. This "illusion theory"
is summarized in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "colors are conceptualized as
objective, intrinsic features of physical bodies but, so it happens, there are no such features
in nature. The essences are virtual, not actual." [3] These varying theories on color are
integrated; for example, in addition to illustrating color's subjectivity, Goethe shows color to
be illusory with his experiments that temporarily burned images upon his retinas. After
viewing a brightly-lit circle for a sustained period of time, he switched his view to the darkest
part of the room, whereupon he continued to perceive a circular image that gradually changed
from yellow, to red, to blue, before disappearing entirely. [4] The colors were illusory in
that they did not emanate from an existent object, but they were simultaneously as
real as any other color source.

Thus, there are opposing approaches to philosophy of color, contrasting "color-as-in-
physical-objects" with "color-as-in-experience." [5] This dialectic is complicated by the
fact that we learn and teach colors through paradigms, which rely both upon objective
observation and subjective perception. In support of color as an intrinsic quality, David
Hume writes, "a blind man can form no notion of colours...Restore [him] that sense in which
he is deficient; by opening this new inlet for his sensations, you also open an inlet for
the ideas; and he finds no difficulty in conceiving these objects." [6] And yet Hume's
argument also supports the notion that color is experiential, that we need not perceive it
strictly through causal connections; he continues:

Suppose...a person to have enjoyed his sight for thirty years, and to have become perfectly
acquainted with colours of all kinds, except one particular shade of blue, for instance,
which it never has been his fortune to meet with. Let all the different shades of that
colour, except that single one, be placed before him, descending gradually from the deepest
to the lightest; it is plain, that he will perceive a blank, where that shade is wanting,
and will be sensible, that there is a greater distance in that place between the contiguous
colours than in any other. Now I ask, whether it be possible for him, from his own
imagination, to supply this deficiency, and raise up to himself the idea of that particular
shade, though it had never been conveyed to him by his senses? I believe there are few
but will be of opinion that he can. [7]

However, Hume's theory of color takes it to be thoughtfully conceptualized, and does not
deeply address the fact that color, in its quickness, rarely requires thoughtful
mediation. We recognize an object's color before recognizing
the object's iconography or symbolism because
color does not require conscious interpretation; as David Batchelor writes, color "speaks to
the senses rather than to the mind," and thus, it is "the language of nature." [8] Because
of its immediacy, color can influence or control the way in which one perceives its object.
Optically, certain colors appear more present, or closer to the foreground, than others;
"pale yellow-green" is commonly perceived as the most foregrounded color of the spectrum.
Subjectively, color is a sensible quality, so, as John Locke writes, it produces
individualized feeling or emotions as the mind reacts to the sense. [9] For example, Goethe
makes the generalization that yellow "carries with it the nature of brightness, and has a
serene, gay, softly exciting character...This impression of warmth may be experienced in a
very lively manner if we look at a landscape through a yellow glass, particularly on a grey
winter's day." [10] Caught between objectivity and subjectivity is the impact of color as
a tool; as Clement Greenberg writes, color is the optical means by which painting both
imitates and resists the realism, the tactility, of sculpture. [11]

On the other hand, some conceptions of color treat it as something that is, in fact,
mediated by its perceiver. As Gustave Moreau taught his art students, "you must think
through color, have imagination in it. If you don't have imagination, your color will never
be beautiful...Color must be thought, dreamed, imagined." [12] In addition to color as a
foundation of imagination, it also acts as a very powerful
metaphor. Thus, as Marshall McLuhan writes, it translates the experience of its
perception into new forms; its perception is partly dependent upon cultural conditions. [13]
Color is a communicative tool: green means go, red means stop, possibly even when viewed
out of context. This is why one can confidently say that a certain visual color
"is" melancholy, or a certain sonic color "is" an oboe, when clearly the color is merely
symbolic or iconic of the association. Beyond commanded symbolism, though, Western societies
associate color with things foreign, uncontrollable, or downright evil. According to
Batchelor's concept of "Chromophobia," we associate color with drugs, homosexuality,
infantilism, and uncontrolled jouissance. "To be colorful," he writes, "is to be
distinctive and, equally, dismissed." [14] Color is inseparable from life, and thus, color
is integral to nearly every other prejudice.

Hence, according to Batchelor, we default to colorlessness. Normality and safety are
without color, as classically shown in The Wizard of Oz. Dorothy falls from the
routine safety of colorless Kansas into Oz, a land that is sometimes joyous, sometimes
decadent, and sometimes deadly; but it is consistently brilliant in color. Her entry into
color is indeed a fall in that she plummets from the sky as well as into unconsciousness. [15]
When Dorothy is freed from her unconsciousness, she leaves her imaginary world and returns
to a waking state of colorlessness. Color requires imagination not only because we
experience it sensuously, but also because it does not physically exist in every imaginable
form. In considering whiteness, Batchelor refers to a particular artist who "used tubes
of white light -- or rather daylight, or cool white, which is to say whites, not white." [16]
The multiplicity of whites, each of which one could accurately describe as, simply,
"white," shows the impossibility of actually viewing a pure form of white; an object that
appears to be perfectly white when viewed against a black background may seem blue when
viewed against a colored background. This "illusion theory" can be applied inductively to
every other color as well as white, with the conclusion that color is entirely imaginative.

Frantz Fanon refers to the same imagined default of monochrome colorlessness when he claims
that white is the skin color against which all others are gauged. He writes, "not only must
the black man be black; he must be black in relation to the white man...[Yet] the black man
has no ontological resistance in the eyes of the white man." [17] Caucasian skin is safe
and reliable, while other skin tones mediate identity; Fanon later writes that he was forced
to objectify himself by the discovery of his "blackness" (which, in the perceptions of his
acquaintances, was produced primarily by his skin color, rather than by his character).
In a passage that seems to anticipate McLuhan, Fanon rhetorically asks of his blackness,
"What else could it be for me but an amputation...?" [18] Color in the racial sense, as in
other forms, is dependent upon imagination: Fanon knows that his skin tone conjures
prejudices. More literally, our imagination and artistic portrayals of caucasian skin
approach the same "pure white" that we can only idealize, despite the fact that caucasian
skin often appears more pink than white.

Fanon's personal perception of his blackness, of course, is built upon much more than simply
his skin color; rather, it stems from his ethnic characteristics, and all associated
prejudices. His blackness is cultural, but it is also inescapable: subjective and
objective. Hence, color as a non-visual quality is understood within the same dialectic
of color-as-in-experience versus color-as-in-object. Consider sound, which can be
described as possessing a certain color, or "timbre," which refers to the shape or
pattern of the waveform that interacts with the listener's ear. The waveform, which exists
as rapid fluctuations in the air, is created by the vibrations caused by a sound source
(e.g. a bow) upon a sound filter (e.g. a cello string).19 Timbre makes sounds identifiable:
a sine wave has a different timbre than a triangular-shaped wave, and as such, the ear
reacts differently; a sine wave typically sounds "smoother" than a triangle wave. Timbre
is conceivably objective in that sound waves are empirical; the waveforms that adjacent
listeners hear are virtually identical. Subjectively, however, each listener may be
stirred differently by the same sound; for example, a flute induces different emotional
responses in different people.

Like visual color, we learn to describe sonic color through the use of paradigms. To
describe a sound as "metallic" is to communicate a recognizable feeling of the sound without
having to specify the acoustic processes that created the received waveform; yet the
description is only recognizable to those who can comprehend the metaphor. Thus, sound
color, like visual color, evokes associations, be they abstract (e.g. tranquility) or
experiential (e.g. vomiting). Also, the context of the sound is important; just as a
visual color changes appearance when viewed against differently-colored backgrounds, a sound
source's timbre is affected by external acoustic elements, such as the shape of the room
in which the sound exists. [20]

The word color is used to describe feeling in other media, as well. A vivid literary scene
can force the reader to imagine a distinct color palate if it mentions wooden furniture,
a glowing fire, and sacks of pretzels. Or, independently of the story's content, melancholy
literature can be described as having a "blue" or a "cool" color. In that these
comprehensions of color are commonly understood, they are objective; in that they are
metaphorical, they are subjective; and lastly, they are illusory in that the textual color
is conjured solely within the reader's mind.

Due to the contradictions between objectivity, subjectivity, and illusion, color cannot be
directly addressed in its complete existence, just as its relation to its corresponding
media is complex, debatable, or ambiguous. It is, like language, "symbolical and
figurative," according to Goethe. Thus, he writes of colors, "They are not to be arrested,
and yet we find it necessary to describe them; hence we look for all kinds of formulae in
order, figuratively at least, to define them." [21]